Our journey to and with Holly

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Happy Birthday to our Baby Girl! It’s absolutely amazing how quickly this year has gone for us. It seems like yesterday that we were posting about bringing Holly home. And what a fun year it’s been! Holly is an amazing little girl. Here is what she is doing at 1:

She has several words that she can say, these include: light, button, kitty, doggie, duckie, Daddy, Mama, Nana, hi, yeah, necklace, monkey, kick and ball. She can also meow like a cat. She understands a ton more than what she can actually say, and will happily fetch a book, or one of her toys when asked to get them. She can point to her head, feet, and ears when asked where they are, and points to our nose when asked where that is. She can also sign “all finished” and “more”, and is working on “milk” and”water”

She is a walking maniac. She started walking about a month ago, and it is now her main means of getting around. She loves to walk so much that when we set her down on the floor, she starts to laugh.

She’s also an excellent dancer, and will sway back and forth or bounce up and down whether there is music playing or not, she’ll often sing to herself and dance along with the song she is making up. When she wants us to play something, she will sing and dance, then look at us.

She prefers finger food to pureed baby food now, and makes it clear that she is ready to eat on her own, usually by bursting into tears when she sees the jar of baby food. She’ll eat almost anything, and will try any new food we put in front of her. she may not always like it, but she’ll always give it a taste at least once.

She is a very happy girl, but she is also highly opinionated, and if she isn’t getting what she wants she’ll let you know in no uncertain terms. But she is easily pleased and it really doesn’t take much to make her happy, a book, a toy, or several kisses to the belly usually does the trick.

She loves people and will wave and say “hi” to perfect strangers on the street. She loves animals and gets wiggly and excited whenever she sees one, whether it be a cat, dog, or even pigeons.

Books are her favorite toy, and she will frequently ask to be read to. She likes to flip the pages herself, and points to the pictures and asks “Dah?”, to which we dutifully answer “pig”, “dog”, “flower”, etc.

Holly is a joy and we are so happy she is in our lives. Here are a few pictures of the last year.

And by popular demand (and I do mean popular, and I do mean demand), here are some of the first photos from the hospital, and a few at home. Finally! My apologizes for the delay. Kate and I have officially discovered the baby time vortex. As far as I’m concerned, it’s yesterday right now and tomorrow is coming today.

This is just a photo post, but here’s a quick status update: baby is healthy and awesome. Parents are coasting on sleep dep. and joy. More photos to come in a few days. Thank you so much to everyone for well wishes. Kate and I feel humbled by the show of love and support.

Born July 28th, 2010. 8lbs, 14oz. Healthy and gorgeous, with all 10 fingers and toes. And she’s ours!

How it all happened: Today at about 4pm we got a call from our social worker telling us that there was an “instant baby” born yesterday. This means that the birth mother hadn’t contacted the agency until after the baby was born. We agreed to show her our family book, and about two hours later, she’d picked us and we were on our way to the hospital. We meet her birth mom and family and got to hold her. Man, did I mention she’s gorgeous? We don’t get to bring her home until Saturday, but we’ll get to spend all day tomorrow with her at the hospital. We’re very much in shock and so happy!

More later when things have calmed down a bit. As of right now, it’s 2:00 AM and this is how we feel:

Well, this is not a happy post to write. It has officially been one year since we entered the waiting family pool at our agency, and it feels like we are starting to prune up. We knew that it could easily be a year before we were matched with a birthmother, but we were hopeful that it would not take that long.

Unlike our Vietnam disaster, nothing is shutting down. Things are still working, just painfully slowly. Our agency is doing what they know how to do to get all of their families matched, but the fact of the matter is there are not very many birthmothers and there are a lot of waiting families. In the past year we have not seen nearly as many birthmother profiles as we thought we would. Along with a general shortage of women choosing adoption for their child, we have chosen not to show our family book to some women because it just didn’t feel like a good fit for us. We have shown to probably 8 women in the past year, none of whom decided to work with us. And while we are happy for the families that were matched this year, we are feeling pretty blue about the whole situation.

We have not lost hope, we will eventually bring our child home. It is just taking so much longer than we ever imagined it would. We are ready to bring our child home now, but we have not found them yet. Here’s hoping our next blog entry will bring happy news.

It’s been a while since our last post. Sorry about that. Nothing much has been happening in the adoption part of our lives. We are simply waiting for that perfect match to come along and change our lives.

We did, however, spend some of this time shopping for our “instant baby” bag. In the event that we get a midnight phone call that there is a baby available and we get chosen by the birthmom, we have to be ready to go and pick the baby up at a moments notice. If this occurs, we have an emergency baby kit. Thanks to our friends Rian and Amanda, we have a great infant car seat. We also have diapers, wipes, formula, bottles, blankets, and clothes. And of course, my favorite piece to shop for were the clothes.

I LOVE baby clothes! It’s not just the fact that I’m in baby fever mode right now, I have always loved baby clothes, even back when I was going to be a rebel and not have kids. It’s just that whole miniature thing. So, for your viewing enjoyment, here are the outfits we bought the baby for the emergency kit. Those of you who know me best will understand the gray outfits, and why I actually squealed in Old Navy when I saw them. These are the first official clothes we have purchased for the baby.